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mhm mhm, mm hmm, mm hmm. Over, Easy with hosts Hugh downs and frank blair. Thank you everybody greetings and welcome again to you know, there's a classic line in the old musical, 42nd Street when the director tells the understudy you're going

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to go on as a youngster, but you're going to come back a star. Now unfortunately life isn't as glib as those old movies make, it seem to be for most actors. Coming back a star takes many years of work and dedication and the constant honing of

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talent. Yeah. And one person who did that is our first guest, hal linden. That honing of talent and today we'll discover what it means to reach that pinnacle in midlife, won't we? We'll also discover the special rhythms of a Himalayan village with a man who spent

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a number of years living with the Sherpa people in Nepal. His name is Hugh downs. It's the name is the same. It's not me. But there's not a coincidence that the name is the same. It is my son who's an artist and photographer and I'm really

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happy to have him here and before the show is over hal and Marcy David are going to join forces in the kitchen to create a delectable fish casserole for two. You might want to have a paper and pencil handy so you can jot down that recipe

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as they're building And now to our first guest, most of us know hal Lyndon as the star of the television series, barney Miller. Well, Hal spent 20 years refining his craft on the New York stage and a good sampling of those dramatic skills can be found

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in this clip from the cbs special father figure. No, please welcome Powell Lindon. Yeah. So good to have you with us now. I haven't reached midlife yet. Ok, Roy you get me? Well, that's just a little expert. Dr Okay, that's all right, okay. Yeah. That father

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figure, the sun had been away for eight years, but the father had been away for eight years and this was the reunion kind of thing. I was asked what what was father figure about? I said it was about a father And his reunification with two sons

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whom he hadn't seen for eight years. 1 17, played by Timothy Hutton and 19. Uh I read it uh an interview with timothy Hutton and they asked him what father figure was about, He said it's about this Boy who's raising his younger brother and is reunited

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with his father, who hasn't seen in eight years. I wondered if when it's a matter of perspective, remember that always. It's always a matter of perspective. I wonder when you played that role if you had any insight into the role itself from your own four Children?

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I think being a father having four Children and four sets of problems and for for diverse individuals and four near nervous breakdowns with each one, you know? Sure. Uh and one draws upon the wonderful things about being a father, especially a father figure when, when the

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play was about trying to revitalize the family and bring it back together? What were the elements that kept you and your lovely wife Frances together for all those 23 years. Work, hard work. As far as I can tell. I don't think it was any Any better

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23 years than Than anybody else's. But I think if in order to make a 23 year old relationship Work, you're just gonna have to work at it. And we worked at it very hard, very diligently for the full 23 years. The important thing is that it

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has worked during that time when you were raising your family, we ever attempted to go out and get a 9-5 job and give up the stage. You're oh boy! One time when I was Way back in the early 60s, which was the low point in my

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career, um I read an uh an ad in, in uh the union magazine, the Equity magazine. It was an ad for a voice of America to have an announcer. His job as an announcer was a, it was a government job g something you know, with security

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and all that. The only thing is you had to live in Washington. And so I sent away for the audition. And they sent me back some copy and with a note saying, go into a recording studio and record this and ship it back to us. And

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I had that copy in my hands. And I really had maybe a week went by, I couldn't decide do I really want to go to Washington, do I really want to give up trying. And I got a job. So I had one of those things on

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my desk, you know, two baskets, one above have them on mine. So I put it now on the bottom. Yeah. And then I did the job, then I would be out of work maybe two or three weeks and I'd pull it out of the bottom and

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put it on the top. And every so often I go back and check it out. And then I got another job. So I put it back on the bottom. I had that piece of copy for, I think six years, six years regularly. I would examine it

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and decide what shall I? Of course, after six years they would have, they would have gotten a piece of tape. You had theater and, and show business really in your blood. That's what you really want, really. No, no, no, not really. I who else could play

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18 musicals in 20. Yeah. But I didn't start out with any great desire to be an actor. I was a musician. First, I was a professional, I was a professional musician for 12 years and I was in the army as a musician and it was in

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the army that I started fooling around with shows. I was a singer. I used to sing a little uh and I know I never had a driving ambition to be an actor. I went to school with a lot of very wonderful actors and actresses. I went

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to the high School of Music and Art with people like Zohra Lampert and julie baba. So and they were always active in the shows and I just, I was a viewer. I never, never set foot on a stage After I got out of the service, which

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is already into my 20's. Having had a little experience in the army doing soldier shows, I said maybe I'll give that a try. And it was that simple and that's why I went into musicals having been a musician, I was able to read music and I

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was a singer. I've heard it said that music and understanding or an education and music helps in acting to in timing etcetera. So did you find out? Well, I'll tell you where it helps, It helps in earning a living. And probably one of the most important

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things in acting is earning a living while you hone your craft while you're doing all that. You know, if you got all those mouths to feed you better be working. You haven't given up the clarinet. No. As a matter of fact, I started playing again, good

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for you. I had a wonderful experience recently where I, I worked up enough clarinet playing to do a movement of the Mozart clarinet can share it with a symphony orchestra in in Los Angeles, you're going to do more of that, I presume. Yeah, I love it.

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Tell me what was your wife's attitude before you became a star? Well, that was that was a major portion of our marriage. My wife's attitude was always make your mind up what you want to be when you grow up and then go and do it when

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you grow up. Well, you know, I don't think I was driven. I was not an ambitious person and I never really uh pursued anything and never, you know, fought for anything. And I suspect that was one aspect of our relationship that annoyed her and she just

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said you wanna be an actor, go out and do it. It's okay if you're successful or not, if I have to go and get a job, I'll go and get a job. No problem. But if you want to do it, you go do it. And it's

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more or less, I think the message that we give to our Children today decide what you want to do and then go out and do it. Don't take no for an answer. And more importantly, don't take yes for an answer because everybody will say yes to

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you. It's a very important decisions. Its success at this stage in your life rather than coming earlier. Change your reactions to success. I think so, I think certainly when you've tasted failure for as long as I did that successes a all the more sweet and be

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in perspective. The difference between success and failure after all these years is has a lot to do with chance. Has a lot to do with other elements other than my own talent. I don't demean my own talent but Please don't because we all love, you know.

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But the point is that the, the project that I ended up doing was Barney Miller. Now it could have been anyone of 99 other shows which are no longer with us. Well, I happen to know that you've done many other things on television. You have Children

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short one time and there's so many things we still have the Children. I gotta thank you so very, very much for being with us today. Boy Hal Linden brings it down to earth perspective and he uses that word. He brings it to television and it's something

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we rarely see. He'll be back later in the show with Chef Darcy David over there in our kitchen. Our next guest spent a number of years living in one of the villages that dot the Himalayan mountains at the top of the world. And he brought back

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with him a collection of images and observations that he brought together into a book rhythms of a Himalayan village and he knows the author well. But only recently was he able to pin him down long enough for an interview. Here's that conversation between Hugh and his

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son. The artist, writer, photographer hR downs. Mm hmm. There you are. Or use people will know at least we we meet each other on this program because you've been on it before. Let me start by asking him, I'm kind of a basic question. You went halfway

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around the world to find what you were looking for and you've been very successful in your examination of a of a very different culture getting inside it and publishing with regard to it. What motivated you? At first my generation tended to stay within the system and

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try to forge everything in that way. What would you, what was your reason for striking out that far? Well, I suppose there were several reasons involved with this. Number one I had, I suppose having your name, it was difficult to go anywhere in the United States

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without people Bringing all that up. And so to go away to get my own kind of field of expertise was I think difficult to do in, in the United States. And also, I think just being a product of the 60s, there was a lot of dissatisfaction

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on the part of not only myself but also many of my friends and difficult difficulty to identify with many of the People in authority at that time. And there was a great exodus that happened during the 60s. And so I kind of found myself in that

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way wound up in India and Nepal like that right now? You obviously you had a real interest in their way of life and outlook and everything. Yeah, I did that and that you have said before predated you're actually going there. Oh, for sure. Yeah. And, and

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especially with buddhism and the artist, the art of the arts of Asia was very interested in from a long time. And uh, and also a lot of that I got from, you have been talking about different things in asian history and in the pantry. Sometimes for

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many hours we would be discussing things about unusual people like buddhist saints going off to a river and living in a grass shack and being successful. I was always curious about that. How could a man be successful by doing that? I had no idea that that

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would, it would affect you as as deeply as it did in motivation. You never embraced in any formal way of buddhism as a religion, but you're interested, it appears to be very much very sincere inside right? And, and it's important to realize also that buddhism is

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a religion only for the simple it basically it's a psychology. You don't have to give up a religion or a belief system that you have. If you're interested in buddhism, it can be, it's a, it's a psychology that you can apply to anything, anything you do

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and you don't even, it has very little to, to do with one's beliefs? It has to do with applying things that you observe, it's a psychology, has it been helpful to you, Do you feel in, in applying some of the techniques of the buddhist outlook in

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in ordinary daily life? Oh, undoubtedly, Sure. Well, the, the bottom line, as they say in buddhism is basically to examine the origination of greed and anger. Certainly, that's a reasonable thing for anybody to do. And I think that if you do examine those things and you

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try to not let that interfere with your life, that's the major part of buddhism is that. And I think that's just a very sensible thing to, I'm fascinated by what you found over there in the way of those people's attitudes toward their, toward the whole life

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spectrum, particularly their attitudes toward their older, older members of their population. What are some of the differences between, There are major differences And basically, you're talking about a group of people, a society that has not undergone the Industrial Revolution. So they are by our definition, traditional

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people and in the traditional society, particularly in India and Nepal, they have a very set a group of stages that people go through. And when you now there's some beginning stages when you're born, you get a name and things like that, but, and and the bulk

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of your middle years, there aren't very, they aren't really punctuated by stages, but as you get older, there are certain levels that you, you go through you, there's a, there's a time to retire from life. There is a for example, there's a there's a there's a

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time when you are a student in your adolescent years and you're studying, then you get married and you have Children and then after all those duties are gone, you you you retire to the forest to meditate and with your wife and you do work on yourself.

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Is that at a calendar age or is that at the option of the person who elects to basically when you've discharged your duties with your Children, your household is then finished. You give up the household. Yeah. You know, it's a time for more time for study,

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more time for work on yourself and preparing for coming transitions that will be on the horizon now, this is not something they look forward to with dread. Do they anticipate it with with some pleasure of getting a chance to know for sure. Yeah. And and and

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old people there are the they're basically seen as the product of the society. That's what people want to do. They want to get old. They want to be able to live that long. They want to be able to produce those kinds of people. That's something that

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we don't really seem to have because in like I said, when you oppose us to the industrial society, we have an invention and then that invention gets obsolete and when it's obsolete, the new invention is good and we have tended to have an emphasis on what

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is, what is new is good and that doesn't really make make sense. That's not necessarily true. That's what made us think old is bad. Yeah, I think very much so. I think the idea of thinking like machines and with machines has done that. What's their attitude

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toward their calendar age? Like if somebody, if they're real age becomes known, is that something embarrassing to them or not at all? In fact there's a, yeah, there's this people are tremendously proud of having achieved great age. I mean it's obviously very successful this person also,

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they have you on the language for example, in nepali you immediately establish how old somebody is. So you know, whether to call them older sister or older brother. That's very important just to build into the linguistics that the language that they speak. So there's none of

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the trickery of trying to pretend you're younger than you are and you don't know. That's yeah, that's right. You see that here, You know, people will often pretend to be younger. That doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, why would somebody want to, why wouldn't

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they just relish what they have done at that age? Yeah. People there are the receptacle of the culture. So young people through the respect, the young people go there. That's where they learn how to how their culture works. They learn, there's a tremendous amount of feedback

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from people who are older and that's something that, like I say, it's common in traditional societies, not so common here. The famous studies in the 20s by Margaret Mead and where she found that most of these non industrialized societies, these traditional places will have maybe four

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generations living under the same roof and they all give important information to each other. And it's very important to have that. You have a great grandparent living in A place whose also learning from, from an infant. And and that's something of course here that you know,

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you're 20 years old, you're gone, you move out, you have another house and maybe in a different city and that's a recent development is their attitude toward death profoundly different from Western attitude uh in many ways. And I think probably one of the most startling ways

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is, well, first of all these people are agriculturalists, they, they live very close to the land every year in the fall. The plants wither and die. They see that every springtime the new shoots come back up, they see that and you can't help but be profoundly

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influenced by this. So anything that Withers and dies, they have a tremendous optimism that that somehow it must continue everything else certainly does and they're convinced of that. Now again, we have been removed from now. Many farmers of course still see that even here and even

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industrialized farmers will have that sense, they're able to, to see that and it's, it's hard not to be convinced of it when you see it like that. Listen, good luck with the book rhythms of a Himalayan village, proud of you for publishing it and thanks for

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joining us on over easy. How can I comment on a guest like that without obvious bias. But I was very, really was very proud to have him on the program. Now, if there were a kitchen in barney Miller's precinct house in new york city, the scenario

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might go something like this. Chef Darcy David drops in to make a quick baked fish casserole with Hal Lyndon pitching in to help him and make sure that it turns out just right, well, that just happens to be exactly what's happening in our kitchen right now.

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Here they are. Chef Darcy David. Thanks, You were gonna do it. We're limited to bad coffee, coffee except we're going to get you to do most of the work. I don't know if anybody warned you that. Let me tell you quickly what's in the ingredients so

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that we can start them cooking. That's very good. Right. We're starting with a carrot, a nice big piece of broccoli, a cup of mashed potatoes already mashed them ahead of time. A couple of pieces of fish filet, they should weigh from 8 to 12 ounces all

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together, a little bit of salt and pepper, a pinch of thyme and we're going to use one tablespoon of butter now, for starters, you have to slice up that carrot and get it into the boiling water. You go like this. That's alright, yeah, sure, but not

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the finger please. Good. Yeah. Right, good, okay, just drop it into the pot. Um you're doing so nicely with that. I'll let you break those apart. I'm gonna peel, peel the broccoli stem, people too often throw this away. That's good. Just drop it in and the

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stem really has lots of good flavor. Do you normally sing while you work? Is that are you just trying to confuse me here? Good. If I cut carefully, we're not supposed to cut each other either know we're doing fine. All right, good, okay, get all of

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that into the pot, broccoli carrots, what is this called? This is a baked fish casserole for 22 and the water is they didn't warn me that it was gonna be like this, I'm gonna have to help you here, we're gonna get into trouble on the time

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here. Good. The fire never gets hot enough when you need it hot, but that'll that'll come along pretty well, unfortunately, a little too much. Thanks back to work for one cup of mashed potatoes into the Castle Castle Castle, can you imagine what that'd be potato soup

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over there. Okay. And you want to just sort of, how about smush is that a good word that around the bottom of the casserole? I often wonder when a recipe says put it in the bottom of the pot. How could you possibly get in the top

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of the pot? I don't know what they say. Put it in the bottom of the pot. I got it, I got it, I got it, I got it. I got it. Now, I should tell you again right. The first time that it was like something I

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used to do when I was a kid patty cake, patty cake grate. The vegetables aren't quite, yeah, they've got to be a little absolutely good. Good. Let's um, you can put the time on, let's Sprinkle it on, on the fish. We're going to get a jump

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on it since that's not a little more than that. But that's what you're doing pretty well. Do you sing? You don't play the piano. It's a clarinet. Right, okay. Uh, stop, stop enough. Okay. I think the vegetables are no, no salt. Here. Here we go. I

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swear it gets me in terrible trouble with the people at the next table. Excuse me? I beg your pardon? Maybe we're not gonna invite him to the restaurant at this rate. Now we want to get the veggies out of there and uh, put them over the

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potatoes and I don't want any water. I just want the vegetables. Very good. Okay, just spread them on there. And you should really listen. I don't want to, it's going to be all super. You also want to get a nice combination of colors. Absolutely. Look at

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that all distributed architecturally artistically. How's that good? The idea here is that if they're just nicely crisp, then the time it takes to heat this through, they're not going to get overcooked. The only way to serve the mushy. Right, Is that, is that a mushy mushy?

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No, that's a very good technical term. I really like the fact that Crisp vegetables are finally in, in French cooking and the French. Think they've invented a new thing. The Chinese have been doing it this way for 6000 years. Okay, lay the two pieces of fish

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over that by hand. But well we could. Very good. And now we're gonna put a tablespoon and I better turn that one very, very, we're gonna put a tablespoon of butter. Now we very rarely use butter on our over easy recipes because of the cholesterol, but

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we've got one tablespoon here for two portions. So that's really not a lot. And it gives you a nice richness to the flavor. I want to cover this with foil now and bake it for a half hour at 3 75. Let's review the recipe and then

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I've got one. I'd like you to take, you have my permission arranged one carrot that's sliced and cooked and one bunch of broccoli that's cut and cooked over one cup of mashed potatoes, Add 8-12 oz of fish filet Sprinkle with salt, pepper and thyme dot with

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a tablespoon of butter and bake At 3 75 for 30 minutes. And as it comes out of the oven, everything sort of is cooked to get. You see the guy that cook these vegetables got too much water in them. I'm not I'm not confessing you. Uh

00:24:46.840 - 00:25:02.560

the entire meal is right here. The vegetables and the potato have gotten a little bit runny er than they were supposed to, but if you can reach that over there, there should be enough forks for everybody to taste that. And it gives you a complete meal

00:25:02.560 - 00:25:26.080

in that one casserole. Mhm. In their judgment is about to descend here. This is a red snapper actually, it's a West Coast snapper, which is not the true red snapper. It all, it all comes together very nicely. And as usual, high hot out of the oven,

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there is a little little extra water in there, but that doesn't spoil the taste. Very good grown adults sitting around eating fish considered entertainment around a little piece of if we can convey the idea to the people tuned in how it tastes. And sometimes I think

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I do you know, I got tired of saying that it was good and you don't always know, all you gotta do is quietly eat. I always feel apologetic about the people in the studio because we don't have enough to pass out to them. That's delicious. A

00:25:54.660 - 00:26:13.410

few words and we'll go on eating. Okay. Thanks for joining us in the next few days for Professor Review with martin Sheen, star of apocalypse now. And we'll learn about a nationwide group that will funnel your consumer complaints to people who can do something about them,

00:26:13.640 - 00:26:26.440

right? We'll explore the world of artist thomas, hart benton, the man harry Truman called the best damn painter in America and Jack Lalane will show us more easy ways to stay fit and healthy throughout life to try to take off the poundage we're putting on by

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working with darcy until next time. Thank you all. And so long from all of us on over easy. Yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm, mm hmm. Yeah. Mhm. Yeah. Mm hmm, mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm, mm hmm, mm hmm.

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Mhm mm hmm.